Telengard what's your opinion on the witcher 3 and its goty codex award?
My opinion.
Does it surprise me that Witcher 3 is Codex's GOTY? No. I never thought that Codex's favorite game was actual rpgs.
Do I think it should be #1? No. I think it is shameful that it is even on a list of rpgs that doesn't involve the name Kotaku. Maybe it should be on the best-of list of 3rd person action games, where it can compete against its fellow GTAs of this world, but I will have to leave that evaluation to those who are fans of the genre.
Do I understand what people like about Witcher? Sure.
The gameplay is basic 3rd person action with mmorpg trappings - none of that being of any importance, except in the fact that it means the gameplay is simple enough to not get in the way of the true star of the vehicle - the character. The main character is your modern classic grizzled, middle-aged, highly-skilled warrior who has suffered a great deal of loss. This is a favorite character type for action fans - a type that they can also play in Metal Gear Solid, Nier, and even in Batman (the scars are on the inside). The Witcher Geralt then has enough of his own stamp to be his own version of the popular type, which thus allows action fans to fulfill their fantasy of once again playing the grizzled veteran but in a slightly new way. Then the above is paired with a moving enough story that fits the main character and the game's rpg trappings and C&C, and the game is all set to please the Alpha Protocol set that dwells here. So, you've got the action/mmorpg crowd and the action/story C&C crowd, giving you a sizeable base. And finally there is the juvenile James Bondian wish fulfillment that is the Witcher series' bread and butter. So, solid plus votes to be found therein, and the game does the one core thing that you need to do in these public votes in order to come out on top - it does nothing that really displeases anyone. It may not do anything grand either, but that's unimportant in this type of vote.
Then finally, in the grander scheme of things, the game offers a world of high-school level understanding and maturity, which is about on par with your average Codexerr, so the game doesn't make anyone here think - because thinking is something many Codexers find displeasing. They want to be told only things which they already know. So, the game does that, while at the same time being more sophisticated enough over the Biowarian/Twilight tween fare that they are used to so as to seem sophisticated enough to please their now sophistication-starved 30-year-old brains - brains that are well past ready to encounter much more engaging fare than is offered by tween melodrama.
And finally, and most important of all, far above anything else, it's pretty to look at. Never dismiss the graphics whore vote. And the Witcher threads are absolutely filled with graphics whoring to the nth degree, as you might expect. While graphics alone never scores a high vote, it's
the major controller of that no-one-finding-anything-displeasing factor.
And so, a 3rd person action game gets voted best rpg. Coming up next decade, Codex continues to follow the gaming trend, just later than everyone else: Dragon Age: Origins, then Witcher 3, what else could 2026 bring but HALO: Infinite Squared GOTY.